Seagate FreeAgent Desk External HD suddenly not recognized by IMAC Apple M3

My Seagate FreeAgent Desk 1.5TB External HD was recognized in Finder and readable to access files last week on my IMAC Apple M3 Sonoma 14.4. (and previously the Seagate worked on my now recycled IMAC Intel core i5.) This week I cannot see the Seagate in Finder on my IMAC Apple M3 and receive a message that the disk you attached was not readable by this computer. When I open Disk Utility, the Seagate HD shows up and I am able to run first aid on it. I receive a message on First Aid screen that the process completed. Running First Aid on "Seagate FreeAgent Media" (disk4) Operation successful. I clicked done and still not showing up on desktop or in Finder. Restarted, still not showing up. I ran the commands for mounting disk4 in terminal. Still not showing up. Restarted. Still not showing up. I'm concerned the Seagate has failed. It whirls and has lights. Unfortunately no backup of Seagate. Is the next step to download and run Disk Drill or DMDE to retrieve files from Seagate? Or is there another step I should try?

Posted on Aug 26, 2024 5:24 PM

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Aug 28, 2024 12:09 PM in response to HWTech

Thanks HWTech for your response. Appreciate you taking the time to explain everything. It is not looking good after running DriveDx. Diagnostics of Seagate FreeAgent external drive is unavailable (see report below). Would appreciate suggestions on a data recovery service that is reasonable and keeps my info protected.



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Aug 27, 2024 4:35 PM in response to BDAqua

/dev/disk6 (external, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: *4.1 GB disk6


dell@Ds-iMac-2024 ~ % diskutil mountDisk /dev/disk6

Volume(s) mounted successfully

If it has a partitioning scheme, use "diskutil mountDisk"

If you think the volume is supported but damaged, try the "readOnly" option

dell@Ds-iMac-2024 ~ % diskutil mountDisk readOnly /dev/disk6

Volume(s) mounted successfully

dell@Ds-iMac-2024 ~ %


terminal report above

says it is mounted successfully but have no clue where to find the read only files and if I can even access them to save or be able to use...any suggestions


thanks for the info on NTFS...don't need it that is good to know


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Aug 28, 2024 12:44 PM in response to way2426GO

Make sure that macOS is not blocking the special USB driver. See this DriveDx FAQ:

https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx/kb#external-drive-support-macos-kext-approval


Do you by any chance have a Windows or Linux computer available? If so, we can use that to confirm if the issue is with macOS or a hardware failure with the external drive.


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Aug 28, 2024 2:16 PM in response to way2426GO

way2426GO wrote:

Not sure what to do with a dmg to open and see if there are any files. Any suggestions?

You just double click on the DMG to open it. macOS will mount the DMG volume. Use the Finder to view the contents of the mounted DMG. It should be mounted at "/Volumes"....I'm not sure what the volume name will be though. You can also change the Finder's Settings to show mounted volumes on the Desktop or on the Finder's sidebar.


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Aug 28, 2024 11:11 AM in response to way2426GO

Are you using any proprietary Samsung software to manage this external drive? If so, then you may need to update that software.


What file system is on this external drive? The output of your "diskutil list" command makes it appear that it is possibly a MS filesystem, but it is also odd to see an EFI partition on the drive since I thought only macOS created such a partition when erasing a drive.


If you have installed some third party NTFS software to access the NTFS file system on this external drive, then booting into Safe Mode probably won't help since that software I believe changes macOS so that the built-in macOS NTFS driver is not used and the third party NTFS driver won't be loaded in Safe Mode.


Instead of trying to mount all volumes on that external drive, try only mounting the data volume using this command (replace "diskXsY" with the correct device identifier for the volume you wish to mount):

diskutil  mount  readOnly  diskXsY


From the "diskutil list" output you posted earlier, the command would have been:

diskutil  mount  readOnly  disk6s2


Keep in mind the device identifier for connected devices & drives can change each time you boot or reconnect a device/drive. So make sure to verify the device identifier before issuing any commands.


This command should mount the volume in "/Volumes" by default.



You can see all mounted volumes by using the following command:

mount



Before doing anything, you should verify the health of the external Seagate drive by running DriveDx (free trial period) and posting the complete text report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper on the forum editing toolbar. If the drive is failing, then you must proceed very carefully since any attempts to access the drive may cause the drive failure to get even worse, perhaps to the point where even a professional data recovery service will be unable to recover any files. You will need to install a special USB driver in order to attempt to access the health information of the external drive.


If the drive is failing, then your options are very limited on how to proceed to recover the data since most utilities (even data recovery utilities) are not able to handle the I/O errors produced by a failing hard drive. Plus you usually only get one chance at recovering data from a failing hard drive even with proper software, so choose wisely how you proceed.


Assuming the external drive is healthy, then you should run First Aid again. This time even if the First Aid summary says everything is "Ok", click "Show Details" and scroll back through the report to see if any unfixed errors are listed. The First Aid summary is known to lie (personal experience).


FYI, when posting Terminal commands and Terminal output, please place them in the "Code Insertion" block using the icon which looks like "</>" in order to make the output easier to read...it will help to preserve the original formatting & make it easier to distinguish characters. Or post a screenshot of the Terminal window. Text is better since it can allow us to copy & paste the data & manipulate it if necessary, but we need to be able to easily view the output so a screenshot is better than nothing.


Also, when working with external drives, it is best to disconnect all other external devices so that they don't interfere and in order to ensure they are not included in any Terminal command output (you can use the "external" option when using "diskutil list" to limit the output to a specific drive making sure you don't miss something which can be obscured by another external drive/device):

diskutil  list  external


You should not be worried about the data on the external drive since that data should be part of your backup regimen if that data is important. People should always have frequent and regular backups of their computer and all external media (including the cloud) which contains important & unique data. Apple includes Time Machine with macOS to make this process very simple (not sure about the cloud data though). People can also use other backup options as well, or a combination of backup options. Of course this won't help you now, but it should minimize the chances of needing difficult troubleshooting procedures to access data on a corrupted volume....and hopefully it will be notice for others reading this thread.


Edit: Assuming the external Samsung drive is healthy and it contains a MS file system (NTFS, exFAT, or FAT32), then you may want to connect the drive to a Windows system to see if the data can be accessed or the file system repaired.


Also, while using First Aid, make sure to run First Aid on the physical drive as well to make sure the partition table is checked and is in good condition.

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Aug 27, 2024 8:07 AM in response to way2426GO

I tried safe mode as suggested by Kaz-K....ran the terminal commands


diskutil mountDisk readOnly /dev/disk6

received response

Volume(s) mounted successfully


but Seagate not showing up on desktop or in finder....


is there another way to access the data on the Seagate and download the files from the Seagate external hard drive

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Aug 27, 2024 10:35 AM in response to BDAqua

Thanks for suggestion, checked activity monitor and fsck is not running.

Do I need to allow the loading of third-party Kernel Extensions NTFS one time setup? or not really needed to allow access to Seagate external hard drive?

Odd that this external hard drive worked last week and now will not be recognized even though I am able to successfully mount in terminal but still not showing up on desktop or in finder...

Any other suggestions to access data on this external hard drive?

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Aug 27, 2024 5:02 PM in response to way2426GO

I'm afraid it's either on it's way to toast or some bizarre format... *4.1 GB isn't going to help anybody.


Sad note, the 1.5 GB & 3 GB drives were the least reliabe of all...


https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-q1-2015/


Get another external drive & Give Disk Drill a try...


https://www.cleverfiles.com/mac-data-recovery.html

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Aug 28, 2024 6:36 AM in response to BDAqua

this Seagate is a 1TB external hard drive that I formatted to use on my imac and if I remember correctly is storing 200 GB of data containing images and files


One last chance to save this data from external hard drive......is there a terminal command I can use to copy the files from the external hard drive to a usb, then I can erase the external hard drive.


with diskutil list command, the external hard drive shows up as

/dev/disk4 (external, physical):

  #:            TYPE NAME          SIZE    IDENTIFIER

  0:                          *4.1 GB   disk4


and the usb shows up as

/dev/disk6 (external, physical):

  #:            TYPE NAME          SIZE    IDENTIFIER

  0:   GUID_partition_scheme            *1.0 TB   disk6

  1:            EFI EFI           209.7 MB  disk6s1

  2:    Microsoft Basic Data BACKUP         1.0 TB   disk6s2


tried this command in terminal:

cp -R /dev/disk4\dev/disk6


and received this:

usage: cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fi | -n] [-aclpSsvXx] source_file target_file

    cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fi | -n] [-aclpSsvXx] source_file ... target_directory


files did not copy


am I missing some code?

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Seagate FreeAgent Desk External HD suddenly not recognized by IMAC Apple M3

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